Can You Say Hidden Agenda? by Jason Miller August 6, 2006 at 21:17:33 The Discovery Institute’s True Raison d’être and Why We Need to Be Deeply Concerned Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank which champions socially conservative causes, has become heavily invested in the “debate” between Darwinists and those who wish to introduce Intelligent Design into public school classrooms. According to their Website, Discovery’s stated mission is: “… to make a positive vision of the future practical. The Institute discovers and promotes ideas in the common sense tradition of representative government, the free market and individual liberty.” Finding a handful of academics willing to act as its shills, Discovery’s ultimate goal is to subvert the prevailing paradigm of modern science Read More ›

(Due to earlier technical difficulties with the comment section, I deleted the earlier thread on this same topic. This is a repost of that thread but under a different title.)

I wish to salute Allen MacNeill for his BioEE467 course “Evolution and Design Seminar”. It is one of the few college courses in the USA that has seriously studied ID literature in a science classroom setting. Here are some of his thoughts immediately after the course came to a close:
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Teach Origin of Species Chapter 14!

…the first creature, the progenitor of innumerable extinct and living descendants, was created.
…
To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes…

Charles Darwin,
Origin of Species, Chapter 14

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Bill Dembski’s post on an Australian anti-ID tract, creationism’s belligerent cousin , quotes the science broadcaster Robyn Williams in an interview with scijo Deborah Smith, regarding the alleged defects of the human (and marsupial) body: And the technique appears to have been slapdash or confused: “Halitosis, farting, vaginal discharge, reflux, snoring, rheumatism, warts, smelly armpits, varicose veins, menopause, brewer’s droop … these are not the marks of a designer at the top of his game.” Koalas, Williams also notes, have a pouch that opens downwards. “Was God intending the babies to fall out and crash to the forest floor?” To me, this is fascinating because, once upon a time, it was mostly effete literati who made these kinds of comments. Read More ›

The gods must be crazy if they call this intelligence
Robyn Williams insists the intelligent design movement is as sinister as it is wrong, writes Deborah Smith.

ROBYN WILLIAMS’S heart sank this week when he listened to people from Toowoomba on the radio blithely rejecting the latest scientific evidence on the quality of recycled water in favour of the myths.

It was as if science was just another choice of product on a supermarket shelf they could ignore at will, says the ABC science broadcaster. “People simply say, ‘I don’t want to know that. It’s inconvenient’.”

The prevalence of this attitude has been playing on Williams’s mind as he ponders the way the intelligent design movement – creationism’s “belligerent teenage cousin” – has sprung up “like a boil on a bum”. One of its hallmarks, he says, is the arrogant dismissal of carefully weighed scientific evidence.

Until recently Williams had thought it unwise to give any more publicity to intelligent design – the notion that life is too complex to have evolved without some assistance from an intelligent designer, whom many adherents believe to be God.

But its well-resourced backing in the US, from the President, George Bush, down, and its spread here – it is taught in science classes in about 100 schools, he estimates – has finally forced him into print.

He pulls no punches. Intelligent design is a politically sinister movement, a form of terrorism focused on public education, he argues in a new book, Unintelligent Design – Why God Isn’t as Smart as She Thinks She Is. “The means are devious, the arguments deceitful and the consequences profound.” Read More ›

Note especially the opening segment by Donohue:

Recently, an analyst of the Kansas state science standards controversy drew my attention to the fact that “every newspaper in southeast Kansas was against the standards and went out of their way to promote the candidacy of [x’s] opponent and his defeat.”

Yes, I’ll bet. Most media people are liberals. And just as materialism is the organized religion of the school system (and Darwinism its creation story), liberalism – in its modern form – is the social policy arm of materialism.

(That’s why so many litmus tests for liberalism (legal partial birth abortions, stem cell research, euthanasia) attack the uniqueness of humans. It’s not incidental.)

One outcome is the astoundingly ignorant legacy media coverage of “religion” stories. Since the mid-Nineties, I’ve yawned with peers through lots of meetings on the subject but don’t consider the problem resolvable until there is more diversity of ideas and cultural background in the newsroom. But now, on Darwinism in particular, media pros can understand private non-rational dissent (“I just don’t believe it in my wee little heart”), but not public, evidence-based dissent (“In my professional opinion it did not happen that way”).

Actually, it doesn’t even matter to the media materialist whether Darwinism is true. What Darwinism UPHOLDS is seen as true. That is, of course, promissory materialism – the belief that even if the evidence is weak now, we will find strong evidence one day because materialism is true. Lying about or suppressing contrary evidence or persecuting dissenters isn’t a serious problem because Read More ›

What can I say? Michael Shermer is a mensch!  . . . In a refreshing departure from the personal animosity that characterizes much of the evolution-ID conflict, Shermer notes that he has had amicable debates, and shared friendly meals and car rides, with mathematician-philosopher William A. Dembski and other ID proponents. . . . MORE: “Intelligent Debate” by Kenneth Silber for TCSDaily

Apparently, pundette Ann Coulter has continued to say unnice things about Darwinists and Darwinism (gasp! Say it ain’t so!): Interviewer Charlotte Allen: Many arguments in favor of Darwinian evolution strike me as actually being arguments against the existence of God–that is, why would a creator create tapeworms, disease viruses, and other bad things? Why do you think such things exist in a world of intelligent design? The Coult: Your question is incomprehensible. I assume you are trying to ask me: “Why would God create tapeworms?” My answer is: God also created mosquitoes, which I hate. But purple martins love mosquitoes and would probably all starve without them. It’s kind of a “big picture” thing. Of course that doesn’t explain why Read More ›

Dr. David P. Barash writes in a op-ed to LA Times:

I also look forward to the possibility that, thanks to advances in reproductive technology, there will be hybrids, or some other mixed human-animal genetic composite, in our future.

This may seem perverse, because even the most liberal ethicists shy away from advocating the breeding or genetic engineering of half-person/half-animal. Why, then, am I rooting for their creation?

Because in these dark days of know-nothing anti-evolutionism, with religious fundamentalists occupying the White House, controlling Congress and attempting to distort the teaching of science in our schools, a powerful dose of biological reality would be healthy indeed. And this is precisely the message that chimeras, hybrids or mixed-species clones would drive home. Read More ›

LAWRENCE, Kan. – The University of Kansas is sponsoring a three-month series of lectures about evolution and intelligent design, and organizers hope it will spark a broad public discussion….  The only speaker who appears to support intelligent design is Michael Behe, a Lehigh University biochemistry professor and author. (Hat Tip: Mike Gene of TelicThoughts)  More…

We support the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who remove themselves from it.  Of necessity, this honor is generally bestowed posthumously. It’s the Darwin Award! 😆

I want to invite on this thread names of past scientists who thought Darwinism was B.S. along with evidence showing that they did indeed think this. Me first: Wolfgang Pauli. Check out pp27-28 at http://www.igpp.de/english/tda/pdf/paulijcs.pdf.

The Politically Incorrect Guide To Darwinism and Intelligent Design

Bill mentioned the book earlier here, but when the Discovery Institute sent me the photo, I just had to post it! Read More ›

Professor Ratzinger goes back to school. After Islam last year, Darwin topic this year Evolution will be the focus of the upcoming seminar between the pope and his former students in Castel Gandolfo. Meanwhile, Jesuit scholar Christian W. Troll has updated his analysis of progressive Muslim thinkers by Sandro Magister ROMA, August 2, 2006 – This year’s Ratzinger-Schülerkreis seminar will focus on “Schöpfung und Evolution”, creation and evolution. The private meeting is set for Saturday, September 2, and Sunday, September 3, at the Pontifical Villa in the pope’s summer residence of Castel Gandolfo (see photo). The Ratzinger-Schülerkreis, that is the ‘Ratzinger Students’ Circle’, brings together once a year the old theology professor, now pope Benedict XVI, and his former students Read More ›